Gmoney | Layer Zero

Transcript

[Music] welcome to layer zero layer zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the ethereum community crypto is built by code but is composed by people and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it and layer zero focuses on the people behind the code because ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been today we are speaking with g-money the famous knitted cap ape on twitter and a prolific just market investor and g-money has been sharpening his teeth in markets from a very very early age he got into the world of markets at

the age of 12. so the world of the world of finance the world of markets definitely pulled him in very very early and getting those lessons under his belt uh early in his life uh lifetime really helped him get into the world eventually into the world of crypto i think he's a it's he's a phenomenal person to actually be able to uh remove bias and uh personal interests in markets and really just being able to look at the broad market as a whole and make informed decisions after that uh and uh that's what allowed him to really establish himself before getting into crypto uh and then got into crypto in in 2017 smartly used the lessons of the the dot-com bubble to time-ish the top of

the market and then not have to go through the grueling bear market and then also fantastically timed getting back into crypto uh and so really just used uh kind of in the same way we were when we were talking to dc use his experiences in legacy markets to really inform his guidance into crypto markets uh and then we go into the his transition into the worlds of nft and i really like the juxtaposition between uh g money's time and nfts versus g money's time in tradify markets where one is very transactional one is very just like performance based nfts are much more community based and and you know and what are nfts other than art so art based as well and i think it really tells a fantastic

story of character development of going from you know cold traditional markets into warm fuzzy nfc community markets so i hope you enjoyed this conversation with g-money before we get to that conversation however we have to talk for a moment about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible matcha everyone's favorite dex aggregator has just launched an open beta for gasless trading so if you're trading more than five thousand dollars in common eath and wrapped bitcoin pairs and your gas fees on matcha are free and that's why you should be using matcha matcha routes your orders across all the various defy exchanges on ethereum polygon binance smart chain and gives you the best possible price without any trading fees or unnecessary slippage matra has smart order routing that

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that's a-l-c-h-e-m-i-x dot f-i follow alchemix on twitter at alcomixfi and join the discord to keep up to date with alchemix v2 and to get involved in governance hey gmaddie how's it going hey how are you how you doing thanks for having me fantastic i'm i'm a huge fan so so glad to finally make it on the podcast yeah you are going to be the the first uh pseudo-anonymous person on layer zero and for those that are actually watching the the video there is an animated uh crypto punk monkey with the knitted cap which of course is g-money's famous uh ape uh crypto punk uh how how did you get this animation how does the animation work um this was actually made by uh

crypto novo uh and a couple people that he works with that when uh it was like in january or february when um i bought the ape and you know i was i was talking about punks uh a lot at the beginning of the year um he is a fellow punk holder uh he owns a tassel and he was like hey like let me get you a snapchat filter that you can use on zoom calls and i was like that sounds amazing and uh i've been using it ever since i love it yeah and so again for the people listening to this the mouth gmoney's mouth actually moves and it looks like the eyes actually blink too which is pretty crazy and also if you turn your head it looks like it's very 3d so yeah it's a 3d 3d rendering of the the ape

that's fantastic okay this is like this is super cool because i also saw scooby troubles from alchemics do this with like an anime character and i is the this is a perfect moment in time to really be injecting some of these snapchat filters because we're all talking about the metaverse and now we get to like layer on these new like virtual representations of who we are as we are on these zoom calls really enabling like the pseudo-anonymous people on crypto twitter and around to still be on camera but still also be be anonymous i think this is really fantastic yeah i think it's it's super cool and i think we're probably going to see more and more of this going forward right like when i got into nfts i understood them right away because of fortnite um and

you know the way people the way kids will change their skins every 15 to 20 minutes like i wouldn't be surprised if you know you have multiple lenses where you know i want to be an ape on this on this call and i want to be a unicorn on the next one right like i think it's i think this would be really cool and in opening up a whole new world of uh personalization right right i'll put on my ape while i'm gaming i'll put on my suit and tie while i'm on zoom and yeah it's really like choose your own adventure choose your own identity as the time comes for it exactly g g money where did the name g money come from so my name begins with the g and uh it's a very ethnic name so a lot of people couldn't pronounce it growing up

in the tri-state area of new york city and people called me g as a nickname and i got uh g-money because i always had a knack for making money so uh like that that's one that stuck throughout high school and college and i definitely want to pick up on that knack as we go through this story so let's let's go all the way back when did the knack of making money start when did you realize that you had a knack for this um well let's see i first started following the stock market when i was 12 years old uh okay so very extremely early yeah and you know i for some reason when i was little when i was like five or six uh like on the dow jones it kind of tells you or on the nightly news it tells you oh the dow

jones went up or down today and i remember asking my f my dad like what's the dow jones and he was like that's gambling don't ever do that and obviously naturally i was drawn to it and so um when i was 12 my grandmother bought me the wall street journal guide to investing uh and that like kind of taught you how to read stock tables and like what a bond is and you know what a stock is and it was super super basic is this your grandma going around your dad uh no i mean they can get into you this was like one day we're like at barnes and nobles and i'm like you know can can you buy this for me and obviously like it's a book like you're gonna buy that for a kid if he's asking for it right and so uh i was uh you know

like i hadn't really i was always i guess curious at that point but i hadn't really done anything with it until i was like 12 around there and then when i went to high school i got an academic scholarship to go i went to a private school and i made a deal with my parents that uh the money that they would have spent on my tuition they they let me invest and that was in like 96 97 so um i was able to take that money which obviously at the time was significant to me and i invested in the stock market uh i made a bunch of money and was it was that a hard thing to convince your parents it's like hey uh give me money so i can go invest in it no i i it wasn't because

like it was i think they saw it as like education and they saw that it was already like really into the stock market like i would like get the night i would get the newspaper every day and i would like check stock quotes right like this is like like as the internet was evolving right like i mean i'm in my late 30s so like the internet wasn't prolific at that point right like my first internet experience was on a 28k modem uh so this was like before you could check stock quotes it from from your phone and stuff like that okay so with regards to your parents this was definitely like beyond a phase for you now this was very much a part of like what you were really interested in yeah it was it was probably one of the things i was the most interested in um at that time like

more so than than sports or or anything else is like really just being enamored with the market right and uh and so like i invested i invested the money i wrote the dot-com bubble you know made a bunch of money didn't sell anything and wrote it all the way back down right so that was obviously like a super valuable experience for me that became super important later on as i as i got into crypto and uh you know i went i went to college uh one of my best trades uh bef until literally uh this year uh getting into nft is was i remember i was interning in the city going into my senior year of college and i was in new york city

interning i'm on the subway and i look around and i was like wow like everybody has these white headphones in their ear right right and this is back when the mp3 market was massively fragmented and i just noticed like you know businessman high schoolers like everybody on the train consistently had these white headphones in and that was the original ipod the original ipod for listening to music i remember i remember thinking way back then or somebody else thought this thought i was too young to think of myself but somebody said apple did a very very good job making all of their headphones white yeah yeah because it was differentiated right because everyone else had your classic black headphones and it didn't stand out and so i remember sitting in

the subway and being like oh wow like let me buy some apple calls and i don't know what it is split adjusted now but at the time it was like ten dollars a share i bought the 20 calls for 49 cents or 62 cents and then i sold them for 49 uh within 18 months and you know i was like wow like that like this this is cool like i can make a living out of this right um were you at the time uh i was 20 i was either 20 or 21. i was going into my senior year of college right right okay yeah so very very rare for somebody in college to be to have a sort of windfall yeah and like to me it's like i was like wow this is definitely what i want to be

doing um in the future but uh i'm an only child and my father uh is an immigrant and he had a business that i was set to take over and so i went and i worked with him for three years in that business and then he called me into his office one day and said listen this is what you're doing you're doing this for me um and because of that i love you for it i really appreciate it but like you're you're not going to succeed because you're not doing it for you you're doing it for me this is my dream it's not yours and so he told me he's like go like find a job on wall street because that's what you're passionate about and so at that point like because i had experienced success with like that apple trade and a couple of other things i was like all right i

can go and at this point i'm like 24 25 and i'm like all right i can either i can go to a bank and like try to work my way up the ladder and get my own book and kind of like have my own pad by the time i'm 30. or like i had experienced a ton of success already i just need to learn how to trade and make money in the shorter time frame and you know because my investments generally would play out and so i was like all right like let me go put money up and i put money out up at a prop firm and i learned how to trade right and that was in um i started in like july of 2007 so it was right before the financial crisis like you know in like i i was

before that like i was short country-wide i shorted bear stearns like i like saw the writing on the wall if i knew what cbs was i probably wouldn't be here at this moment because i would have made a ton of money off that but i had no idea what it was wow you shorted the housing market before it crashed yeah i mean i would dude i had country-wide puts when it was at like 35 bucks oh my god that's epic bought apple calls and shorted out of the market in 2007 that's that's insane and and yeah and like you know a lot of it was just kind of just being just understanding like what trends we're doing right and like understanding like the macro of things and and how that affects the micro and you know in in in 2008 in september 2008 i i went long

like a ton of silver and gold and like i i did great off the bottom uh i admittedly like didn't know about bitcoin if not i probably would have bought some you know i i think it was like in 2010 i don't know exactly when but i remember uh finding out about bitcoin around that time 2010 2012 time frame when bitcoin was around 27 and i was on i was on zero hedge and it was posted on zero hedge for the first time and i was like wow this is really cool and i was like all right like i was trying to figure out how to buy some i couldn't figure out how to buy it and then like i just kind of gave up and then like i saw it started running and it went to like a thousand bucks and

then it pulled all the way back to 200 and i was like okay that like that's that was the bubble right like that was it and then i didn't really look at bitcoin for for a couple years after that okay i i definitely want to get into the bitcoin story but i also want to back up and go go all the way all the way back so um we definitely have like a grasp on like your early interest into markets and and definitely having having a knack for that uh i want to talk a little bit about uh your education were there any like classes in school high school or college that really really resonated with you like any kind of subject matter specifically um i mean i majored in finance uh so like i was always i always liked like valuation stuff so i'd say probably

uh in high school there was only really one business class there was an economic class which i took which i loved and then in college like as i'm sitting here thinking about it probably uh a tax class which i took which you know was just like really boring but like super informative and practical and then also like um a private uh evaluation of private businesses which was basically like you know how to value companies through cash flows dcf and all that kind of stuff which i think is super relevant to uh like even just publicly traded companies but to me i was always i was always very interested in uh the market side of things the publicly traded stuff

right so i'm going to go ahead and guess that your education really happens hands-on right in a live environment more than it did actually like in a classroom does that sound about right yeah like i mean i think those two classes that i mentioned are probably the most relevant classes where i learn stuff and you know it's like understanding price action and psychology it's like that's like mass psychology like you learn all that stuff like on the job right like you only learn it by feeling it like i can tell you like like oh like when the price moves against you you should do this or it goes in your favor take profits here but like you really don't know until you live it right like you've been in crypto now for a minute like you understand that like

you're you're when you're like when you're feeling the most ecstatic about your position you should be selling some and when you're feeling the most depressed about your position you should be buying some right because that's just the nature of human psychology no matter what market you're in right that that is the markets right like if you are feeling depressed so is the market when the market is also depressed right and so like you can take your own internal cues and apply them and apply them to the market absolutely um so when you were again in the the younger phases of your stock market finance uh education career be it in university or being hands-on you said you said you looked around and you you saw everyone wearing white earbuds

and so you got into apple then then you saw the writing on the wall with the housing market and short of that and then you got into gold was there for me like i didn't really care about anything in finance until i discovered a bitcoin crypto and so that was my thing but it sounds like you are a more broad you don't have actually no like personal interest in any one sector be it like tech or housing or gold or whatever was there any so what like part of before crypto any part of like the the financial markets that really resonated with you as a sector or is it really just playing the game as a whole so i mean i think like as i think about it i very much understand and i like i like consumer discretionary in general like as uh as a

tech as a stock investor and market participant i'm generally a generalist uh but i understand consumer trends the best right so it's like the apple made sense to me because literally i'm just sitting on a subway and i saw it a couple years later uh i don't know the exact year but like maybe 2005 2006 like true religion jeans i don't know if you remember that fad i do i do that was a publicly traded company and i remember riding it from like four bucks up to like 20 because like everybody that was fashionable was wearing them right and there was this huge boon and so like to me it's like i very much just like was just paying attention to data and just being cognizant of these things that happen

um again like i think to me a lot of it the way i see it is like that's very all these things are very consumer focused and obviously at the end of the day i think the gold trade is you know the gold silver trade is why we all end up in crypto right where it's like hard money and not like money printing is uh ended up what kind of drawing me into to crypto in in the first place while you were going through this like early phase of your uh um finance stock market life were you doing this alone or did you have friends like-minded friends doing like-minded activities so for the most part like in high school it was definitely me on my own in college it was still like me on my own uh when i started trading full-time

obviously i was trading at at a prop firm with a lot of people who are also like-minded trading their own money so you know i feel like when you have your own money on the line it's very you treat it very differently than if you're running somebody else's money um and so like to me i very much uh i guess i kind of started finding my tribe um around like 25 you know and like my business partner on the equity side we've been working together since you know 2007 which is i don't know about 14 15 years at this point before we get into how going with somebody uh change your your uh disposition how did you as an individual everyone has their own like risk tolerance everyone has their own like personal

interest and risk or not how did how did that part of your financial life come come into play like when did you learn that you were where on the risk spectrum um i think i was always pretty far out on the risk curve and i think that's pretty evident with you know the the play i made in nfts at the beginning of the year and i very much like manage like i think as a trader as anybody that's dealing with uh like financial assets in public markets like you're a risk manager right like that's your entire job right like you need to size accordingly you don't want to be too big you don't want to be too small you need to be just right and so you know i think i'm further out on the risk curve than most but i also

understand that because i have so much leverage in let's say my trading life like i will like buy a house with no mortgage right because i understand that like that's not somewhere where i need leverage right like if i was working a nine-to-five job making an annual salary of course i want that leverage because i want to appreciate i want to uh participate in the appreciation of the asset but i know that me personally like i don't need like something that necessarily is safe where if everything went to hell you know i still have a place to sleep right and that's kind of the way i see the world very much is like okay what's the risk in this what am i risking you know what what am i what do i realistically think my risk is

in this and size accordingly right you know like because and i think i i was doing it a lot on a day-to-day basis obviously training where it's like okay like i think like i'm risking 25 cents but if i'm risking 50 cents it's like double the risk right and like that messes up the entire risk reward so to me i always always always focus on position sizing and what i think my initial risk is and and what i think i could lose in any given moment and that helps determine like what i want to do with regards to the position most people who are into crypto and likely most people in coming into into crypto don't come from finance like you do but most people don't actually like cognitively think about risks they just

kind of do their thing and then risk maybe comes for them or maybe it doesn't when did you start like cognitively thinking about risk was that like very very early on in your your finance career or like we did it come around later it didn't start really coming around until i started trading professionally because i think like in order to be successful uh like i mean listen trading markets is probably i'd say probably the hardest job in the world it's you know you're it's emotionally taxing you have to be very very disciplined like you know i've trained a lot of people throughout the years and i will say the number one thing that determines whether you're successful in in publicly traded markets is your discipline right because like if let's

say you're risking a hundred dollars and and this was like a lesson i always tried to teach kids when like they were starting it's like you know let's say you're risking 100 and you lose 120 okay cool that's not that big of a deal right it's an extra twenty dollars you're still gonna be able to eat tonight but you know let's leverage that up like you know 100x right and like if you're risking a hundred thousand dollars and you lose a hundred twenty thousand dollars like that's a that's that's a big drawdown that's significantly more than you were risking and that messes up your upside scenarios right that messes up all your risk reward on any trade that you might take so to me it became very very evident very early on uh especially from the people that taught me is like you need to be disciplined you need to have a

system and you know you need to understand that like you're not you know going to always be right and you don't you know there's a difference between training to make money and training to be right right and you're not going to make money if you're training to be right did you learn this the the whole just risk management behavior from taking a big l at all or did you did you just kind of learn a bit just from just from time yeah like i mean i think i took taking big l's throughout my career right like i think uh really young uh making a ton of money in the dot-com bubble and not selling anything because i didn't want to pay taxes it's like you know you know i went up from like five or six x down to like you know losing 90 right

so it's like to me like that was a like a very valuable lesson early on that you know especially as you know you make it a professional career like i'm never necessarily married to a position right it's like this is a trade and if i'm wrong like i have to get out right or you know like i when i hit my risk limit like i have to get out right and and that's to me is probably the hardest part about trading right is you know if you the more conviction you have in something the harder it is to let go and it's against human nature to like take that loss and kind of regroup and rethink about it from a clear head you know i i was actually just talk chatting with somebody uh over the weekend where they were telling me that like i guess in the march bottom

last year of of crypto where they sold the bottom and then bought it back like you know a day or two later like at a slightly higher price and i'm like that was the right thing to do oh that's that's i did that that was exactly me but that's the right thing to do right like that's the beauty of like a very liquid market right like if you if you did that with real estate you wouldn't be able to get back in but like the beautiful thing about things that trade 24 hours all the time is that you could literally you could buy it and they'd be like oh no that wasn't the right decision you could sell it and it cost you like you know 50 bips like it it costs you like nothing and and so to me it's like there's nothing more

important than having a clear head when you're making these really important decisions and that was something i learned like on the job uh thankfully through the people that taught me and and my experience so when in your in your timeline did you cross the one million mark um uh it was i it was at some point in my twenties um you know it was i did really well obviously um off the bottom in in uh in march of 2000 into the well in in september 2008 march of 2009 i did really well um and then you know i experienced like a hard time in my trading career in like 2014 2015 maybe uh where i gave back a lot of

what i made uh just because the market was just very hard to trade at that time and then okay so i think it's time to go into uh the bitcoin crypto story so where we left this off is you stop bitcoin around 20 you wanted to buy it but it was too hard watch it go to a thousand watch it drop to 200 where does it where what happens next and so like i just wasn't paying attention to it afterwards right like i was just like i would pay attention to it whenever like it popped up on zero hedge or the news like i knew what it was because like i remember the first time i read about it i i was like going down the rabbit hole for like two or three hours i couldn't figure out how to buy it i was like oh like that was it

tulips and then uh in mid 2017 early 2017 bitcoin starts getting back above the thousand bucks and i'm like oh like me as a security yeah me as a student of price action like there's something here right like if if price gets back above there and it's holding like this would be something that i'm paying attention to so i decided to do a deep dive and from that deep dive i find ethereum and i'm like wow this is even better than bitcoin right because like there's programmers on here and like i want to go where the devs are because that's where the talent is going and then i started going down the ico rabbit hole and you know i caught let's say like the mid to late stage cycle of that

and i remember in like q1 of 2018 being like this tech is really good it's gonna change the world but i was i still remembered my experience back back in high school right where uh obviously the internet was gonna change the world but every all valuations got ahead of themselves so i sold anything that i had that was liquid in q1 and i was like i'll be back and i'm like it's gonna take like seven to ten years to build out blockchain tech right because i was using the dot-com uh parallel right where the the 90s came like you know the the bubble popped in 2000 and then the internet that we really used today didn't come about till like 2010. so i was like all right tech is going to move a little faster so

maybe seven years and you know i sold anything that i had that was liquid and i was still keeping an eye on it from from afar and um you know when when jerome powell said in march of 2020 that he was buying everything i wired a bunch of money over to coinbase did my first uh rebuy of crypto in in like three years and i started going back down the rabbit hole and i was like holy [ __ ] like they built some really cool stuff like very fast right like the first time i used ave i was like this is going to change the world and so you know i start listening to as many uh podcasts as i can like that's where i found you guys and started listening to you guys as i

was starting to get reacquainted with everything that i missed and you know i was yield farming and you know kind of like trying to figure it out and i found nfts in like august or september uh late august early september and immediately they start making sense to me because i started playing fortnite at the beginning of quarantine so we are actually um uh uh in the classes of the same era we came into uh crypto around 2017. i came in i started really paying attention in like june or august or something and then went all in in like september but uh where you had the uh the the dot-com bubble in your belt i had nothing and so your.com bubble lessons

was my crypto 2017 lessons where uh you know went all in on ether at 300 dollars at in like uh yeah the first half the middle of 2017 goes up to 1400 i'm like wow this is insane like i'm a psych student i had no idea that this would be like i would have this money and then it goes down to 600 and i'm like all in and then it goes down to 400 i'm like all in and then it goes down to 200 i'm like all in and then it goes down to 80 i'm like well i'm out of money uh and so like it's it's funny and this is why like everyone talks about like oh class of 2017 class of 2013 now we have the class of 2020 in 2021 and like it's kind of just like this rite of passage

for so many people that don't know about money and finance to buy the top have an insane amount of conviction not understand that like it doesn't matter about your conviction it really matters about like market dynamics and that a lot of people make their first very big lesson into the space thankfully very early right like i think one of the best benefit tailwinds that you've had is you had your very big uh like burn at the very beginning of your career and so you kind of kind of can understand like the the highs and lows of emotions as as the charts go through highs and lows and then you have that under your belt as that you are prepared to to ride future waves yeah i agree it's very interesting like at you know sitting on a trading desk like we always say like you know

the worst possible thing that like you could experience as a trader is a lot of success right out the gate right right because then you think oh you're the smartest guy in the room you're invincible and then you take big risks with big amount of money right i'd much rather learn that lesson with a smaller amount of capital so that i'm smarter and i'm wiser when i have more capital to deploy do remember anything in q1 of of 2018 and for the listeners that aren't familiar that is literally the top of the 2017-2018 bubble do you remember any like signals that you saw i was like eh this is too ridiculous i mean i i think like just prices were going parabolic everyone had everyone had a

a business a white paper right at the time like people were writing white papers left and right and like they were for like some of the craziest things that i'm like like that doesn't even make financial sense as like a business let alone like a token and so i just remember it just i just felt the froth you know and like i i mean i remember when i i sold i didn't sell everything like at around these prices but i remember that day like bitcoin went from like 12 000 to 20 000 in like 20 minutes my best sale was at 16 900 and i was like oh like i was patting myself on the back and then 20 seconds later i'm like wow that was a terrible sale it went up to like 20. and then

like and a minute later i was like okay that was a good sale right like because that's how quickly it was and so like to me it was just it was just like the panic of masses and you know i've seen that type of hysteria in stocks uh you know just trading for for so long you know obviously on shorter time frames but to me it's like all right this is where you sell and then you figure out where where you're gonna buy back yeah people these days that have been in the markets these last few years we have not seen anything close to the blow off top that was bitcoin from 14 to 20k it happened in like i think under 36 hours when i went up from 14 220 hung around like 20k for like four or five hours and then

dropped down to 14 like you know just 10 12 13 hours later it was absolutely insane and then the worst part about it is that like the the rest of the market kept on going and so like ether topped out like two or three weeks later in slightly a more sustainable fashion like it was over a thousand dollars for like three or four days uh and then like and then the altcoin like the altcoin wave just like pumped right after it the most like vigorous pump i have seen across the board of all time and that was it was just like fireworks it was like bitcoin was the first firework ethereum was the next big firework then all of these all coins started popping off and then like after that over the next like six months you just saw ashes just ashes and ashes

just like falling from the sky it was it's one of the most surreal moments i've ever seen yeah yeah you know and it's really interesting because i'm like you know to me like what's different this cycle then was different than me last second because i you know i met a lot of people that stuck in through the bear market that are doing obviously great now because they were grinding it out through the bear market and like to me it's like i i always thought blockchain tech was real but i thought it was like a decade away right and i had a business trading equities where i was like all right do i want to sit there and struggle for the next 10 years for the tech to get caught or you know should i go back to my bread and butter and then i'll come back when i think

it's mature enough and you know like obviously to to everybody's credit like you know stuff got built very quickly and so like i sit here and i look at nfts and i'm like this is very much the same dynamic the market's definitely going to get it out of itself right i don't know if it's there yet or if we're about to get there or if it happened but i know just by the nature of markets that's what happens so but to me it's like all right at most you know if we if we were to enter a bear market today it's like at most i would think it lasts two years right and so because we're just iterating so fast things are being built so quickly and i think i can make a case personally that like it would happen faster because this is so

consumer-facing right and as adoption increases it just hits that lindy effect faster so to me i'm like i'm i'm much more willing to pivot and go into the space full time because to me it feels much closer and much more real than like a lot of what i thought there was like a ton of vaporware at the time and that's a trade in of itself too right like not only is it a trade of your money but it's also a trade of your time and attention and so like what you're saying is like oh i'm re i'm ready to put two years two plus years of my life on the table even if we go through a bear market because uh would you would you say i mean maybe hindsight's 2020 but like uh go going and missing the bear market of 2018 to 2019 and being present during that time

do you think like missing that is a mistake like do you wish you had been there or do you think it was like a good move to like tap out no i i think it was a good move for me because i just i didn't know how long it would be so i was i much rather would go to where i let's say had a more secure source of revenue and you know but like i've seen i i have friends that i made last cycle that you know are crushing at this cycle because they stuck around and i'm like all right cool i mean everybody says you know everyone says that you know you make your money in the bear market that's very true right like you sit there you grind it out you work with people that are really building in the space and you know you align yourselves

with them and you guys are building great stuff together so like to me i don't regret it but it's like a lesson that i'm like okay like this this next bear cycle like i'm gonna be around like i'm gonna stick around because i know like the things that need to get built that are important to get built because like we're over here fighting for like self-sovereignty and like the open metaverse and like we all know what the alternative is and like none of us want that for ourselves or our grandchildren right yeah so when you uh said uh jerome powell started buying everything that triggered your brain to rethink about crypto can you just walk us through the calculus that you were making in that moment yeah so i mean basically here we are about like two three weeks into covid um you know the market's in

free fall uh as a trader i'm you know making a ton of money because the volatility is obviously really good and all of a sudden you know the fed does a press conference uh i think it was like march 28th or 29th it might be march or april but i i don't remember exactly but i remember he basically said he was going to be buying they were going to be buying a ton of corporate bonds and i was my first thought was like buy gold right but then it's like what's a better bet like if i'm buying gold like what has more leverage uh bitcoin what has more leverage than bitcoin eth and so like i immediately just went i'm like all right wire money to coinbase buy as much eath as i can and you know like hang on for the ride because we're about

to put the money printers on uh and you know obviously like that's what's happened over the last year and a half that's that's interesting yeah so ether was at this time i mean at the low of march it was like 80 it was probably around like somewhere like 150 to 200 when you when you were looking at it right then yeah i think it was like high hundreds maybe low 200s around there yeah well congrat congrats on that trade and i think that's a really emblematic of like what it means to be a good generalized uh investor again you when you made the call on apple you shorted the housing market uh bought gold after the fact and it's just i think a really uh interesting another interesting uh story of of you being able to just look at the

broad current context the broad zeitgeist of what's going on and like look around and they count yeah that i think that's a great calculus well gold gold's the obvious choice but like what's what's what's the slightly more risky but also like better goal like and then you just recurse this down to uh to to ethereum because like my my whole my my thought process and like this was the same thought process i had when i got into nfts was like what's going to give me the most leverage if i'm right right like if we all have the same trade on like then like i want to make the most amount of money for the risk that i'm taking like me buying the s p 500 of course i would have done well but it's a much safer bet right like but if

i'm gonna be sitting there risking that we're gonna be printing a ton of money like how far out on the risk curve and i guess this goes back to like my risk tolerance is like i'm willing to go far out on the risk curve because i'm like all right well i know i have this at these assets in this basket in my safe basket and then these are the assets where i'm like okay like let's you know let's sit there and and try to make a bunch of money with it so when you uh got in back into ethereum back into crypto in the uh the march march trough uh was that a trade or did you start really like doing some research and and just getting and cut catching yourself up to speed uh what was that like so yeah so it started me

getting caught back up to speed but i also had like a couple projects that i invested in in the 2017 cycle that we're starting to unlock so you know as they're starting to unlock they're like okay like what wallets do we send we send your tokens to and then you know i start researching on them and then you know like it's so funny i had a wallet that i hadn't opened in a while and i had snx in the wallet and i'm like synthetics yeah and i was like i bought haven in 2017. and so i was like i don't know what this is i'm like i don't know what this is i haven't i haven't uh kept up with any of this so i sold it and i sold it i think like three or four days before i got listed on binance so like i

sold it right before it started mooning and but like but i was very grateful because like at the very least i was like whoa like here's a bunch of tokens that i thought were worthless that are actually worth like a good amount and i converted to ethereum because i knew what eth was i didn't know what snx was and i was just starting to go back down the rabbit hole and like you know like as like you know when things are going up in price you know you start getting more interested and then you know i started talking to my friends that stuck around and they were telling me oh listen to this you know listen to this podcast you know talk to this guy follow this person and you know i was just kind of yield farming and just kind of just following people that i thought were

smart like i got rugged in sushi you know like i was yield farming sushi and i got rugged and so like but to me it's like a learning experience right like i was you know i was trading in the mornings i was trading equities and then i'd be done by like 11 a.m and probably for the next like 12 to 15 hours i'd be reading about defy and listening to podcasts and like just trying to understand because i knew i had a lot to catch up on yeah so uh you you came into ethereum right before defy summer which is literally the perfect time to get into ethereum so as somebody that's been following just financial markets for all of his life what what did defy summer look like because i mean for somebody in crypto i

was like oh we're doing a new weird thing okay that's great but like from i think from a more uh grounded financial perspective defy summer might be kind of surreal what was defy summer like for you um so you know i was playing with like a small amount because i was like all right like you know if i can like you know 3x or 5x like this stack then like you know i can put myself in a position and i like i very much was like all right everything that i had in this in the space uh that i let's say like the synthetics and like a couple other tokens i'm like all right that's gonna be like what i build off of right like i had like the amount that i bought in march that was kind of like my safe my safe stack in in this risky asset but i

wasn't gonna be risking all of that and so i was just like relearning i think one of i think one of my uh things that i'm really good at is understanding that i don't know everything and that i'm willing to learn and that there's not just one way to make money right so it's like if i see people like i'm not i guess you're your typical finance bro that's like oh yeah like there's only one way to get rich and there's only one way to make money in public markets is i'm like well if i see a lot of people making money like like i'd be an idiot to not try to find out how right and just understand the mechanics of that how that works and you know understanding that i can learn from like anybody whether even if they're younger than me like that doesn't mean

that i'm smarter than them right like it's like there's a lot of people in the world that are much younger than me that are much smarter than i am that i can definitely learn from and that like when i was approaching d by summer i was just like again reading as much content as i could get into a pool ask people questions and then kind of learn by doing because that's you know i like sometimes i would read these medium posts and i'm like i that was chinese to me like i have no idea what this person's saying but then if i put like ten thousand dollars at risk like i start figuring it out real quick right because i i don't wanna lose that money so it's like you know like how how do i minimize risk and it was like very much a learning process i knew

that i was i didn't have like the best edge because you know people that understood the medium post that understood code and how to read the code like before something launches they understood the risks way before the night way before i would right and like you know if there was the chance of a rug pull like you know all these things and so like to me i i knew i was fighting an uphill battle but like there was money to be made and i i was it was very much a learning experience that like i'm super grateful for because it again it was like you i learned by doing and i think like all of us is like you know we cut our teeth on on these things like like i wear that rug pull with with pride like um um you know i was i think

i was involved in that one and the i think it was called eminence that that uh that or it might have gone out like right before the rug pull like but like just you know like i even if i get caught in these things i'm not i'm not like oh like you know [ __ ] defy like it's like no like that's part of the learning process right like it's you know if money was free like then everybody everybody getting rich doing it it's like it's nothing nothing in life is free like that while you were going through defy summer was there any like thoughts in the back of your heads like this is unsustainable this is frothy anything like that no uh because i i think that uh to me it's i mean this is like this technology is so crazy like dude the first time i

used ave i posted my ethos collateral and i got a loan against it in five minutes because i was just using it for the first time and i didn't have to post any kyc and i'm like dude this is gonna change the world like that like and i would tell my friends in trap by and they were like i don't get it what's the point i'm like have you ever have you have you ever tried getting a mortgage like you like you know like it takes weeks and they ask you so much and base so many invasive questions and all that is that's just a collateralized loan so it's like this like to me this is like such revolutionary technology that i'm like you know i'm one of the first you know let's say million people that are using it that know it exists like and there's billions

of people on the planet like this is going to be such like you know 10 20 years from now this is going to be such proliferating technology that like even if it is bubbly now like it long-term that's like you know like investing in amazon during the dot-com bubble right like it got real frothy and i think it reached a high of like 90 or something like and this is like before the the splits that it's had and here we are 20 years later and you know it's multiples of that right so like to me like the tech is real how have you gone and balanced your crypto portfolio between like ether and like the d5 tokens specifically in this phase of of the timeline when like uh

you've gone through markets where it's almost impossible to like actually price end fundamentals right the dot-com bubble you can't price fundamentals there uh defy summer can't really price in fundamentals not really like you can kind of see adoption but you can kind of see usage but that's about it so when you're balancing like defy tokens and ether how did you elect to choose the allocations that you've chosen um yeah i mean i i think that like to me it's like because uh i i and it runs at different points in each cycle uh i think that like i understand momentum because i've been a trader so i understand like when momentum is high and you should be in higher beta assets and when momentum is low you should be in like the safer assets uh i guess one

of the ways i've worked on portfolio allocation is i don't use leverage i use very very little ever leverage like maybe i'll use it for a trade here and there for like a couple weeks or a month but i'm quick to pay it off and like as soon as like a drawdown starts i just go straight to like no no loans right because like to me and like i don't go to cash like i don't go to usdc like i'll just go to eth or you know i'm like alright well has the story changed no am i still bullish on it yes all right cool like hold it right like you know over the long term like i think prices will be higher and that's didn't that like to me like i've slept the best like being in crypto even with all this vol because i don't use leverage right so

it's like when these downloads are happening i'm not worried about getting liquidated i'm not worrying about having a post collateral and i'm just like well has the narrative changed no all right stay long right and like that to me has been like how i've approached the space hey guys i hope you're enjoying the conversation with g money thus far in the second half of the show we get more in depth into the world of nfts because g-money of course is a prolific nft person and then we also get into the legacy that g-money wants to leave behind now that he is in this world now that he is one of the most successful nft curators around what does g-money want to do with himself so that was a fantastic question and overall had a broader conversation about the culture

of crypto and how it's meaningfully different than the culture of tradfi and so let's go ahead and get right into that second half of the show but first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible arbitram is an ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use defy and nfts and now it's live and has over a hundred projects deployed gas fees on ethereum l1 suck too many people want to use ethereum and it doesn't have enough capacity for all of us and that's why teams like arbitrary have been hard at work developing layer two solutions that makes transactions on ethereum cheap and instant arbitrary increases ethereum's throughput by orders of magnitude at a fraction of the cost of what we are used to paying when interacting with arbitrary you can get the performance of a centralized

exchange while tapping into ethereum's level of security and decentralization this is why people are calling this ethereum's broadband moment where we get to add performance onto decentralization and security if you're a developer and you want to save on gas costs and overall make a better user experience go to developers.offchainlabs.com to get started building on arbitrom and if you're a user keep an eye out for your favorite defy apps being built aren't arbitrary many default applications on the ethereum l1 are migrating over to layer twos like arbitrarily and some are even skipping over the layer ones entirely and deploying directly on layer two there's so many apps coming online to arbitrarily so go to bridge.arbitrum now and start bridging over your eth or any of the tokens listed and start having the d5 or nfc experience that

you've always wanted living a bankless life requires taking control over your own private keys not your keys not your crypto that's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger hardware wallet which makes proper private key management a breeze but the ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet ledger is the combination of the ledger hardware wallet and the ledger live app and if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite defy apps all in one spot ledger live is where you want to be not only does ledger let you buy your crypto assets straight from the app but it also hooks into all of the defy apps and services that you're used to using ledger live you can stake your ethan lido swap on dexes like paraswap

or display your nfts with rainbow you can also use wallet connect inside of ledger live to connect to all the other defy apps that keep coming online defy never stops growing and the ledger live app grows alongside with it so click the link in the show notes to see all of the defy apps that ledger live has and stay tuned as more apps come online and if you don't have a ledger hardware wallet what are you even waiting for go to ledger.com grab a ledger download ledger live and get all of your defy apps all in one space and that's probably what kept you in the space even after a d5 summer kind of came to a pretty quick end right like it it ended as soon as ether started moving it's like all the people that were because during defy

summer there was a phase like oh it's the d5 tokens that capture value ether doesn't do anything then ether moons finally uh and then that was the end of detail summer and then and everything died uh so uh what kept you going what captured your attention after the end of defy summer i think this is when we get into the story of nfts so so you know i remember all throughout d5 summer i'd see on twitter where people like nfts are like the next big thing and i didn't have time because like i was still like you know i'm learning about sushi learning about wi-fi and you know i'm like well these things are moving so hard like i don't even have time to figure out what nfts are and then when when d5 summer calmed down i'm like all right finally like i had it written down

i'm like nfts and when it calmed down i finally started going down the d5 rap uh the nft rabbit hole and it started making sense to me right away because on the first day of quarantine i started playing uh i doubt i bought a playstation i hadn't played a video game in 10 years i download fortnite i start playing with my friends and their nephews and this one kid first game we play 12 years old uh he goes what what skins did you buy and i'm like skins like they don't give me any special powers i'm not buying this game is free to play i'm not spending any money on this game i'm i'm like 30 years old right like right you know and so here to pass time yeah i'm here i'm here to not go crazy during quarantine

and so i sit there and i realize that uh you know first off in like one or two weeks i start buying a bunch of skins and i see like whenever i play with with these kids like they switch their skins every every game which is let's say like every 10 to 20 minutes like that's like an outfit change that's literally like you during the course of this conversation going into your bathroom changing and coming out three different times so i'm like there's going to be this massive super cycle here that that kid's 12 years old right now 10 years from now he's going to be uh he's going to have his own discretionary income and he's going to be totally okay with the idea of owning something as a purely digital form and so i'm like there's this super cycle

here i don't know how to take advantage of it because at the time i don't know what nfts are and i'm like thinking i'm like all right maybe roblox or like um minecraft like maybe do something with those and like try to figure out a way to monetize but really i was just like looking for a publicly trade at the time roblox wasn't public so i was looking for like a publicly traded um vehicle to do that and then finally in september i find nfts and i'm like holy [ __ ] like this is your skin on twitter and discord and this is how people are going to want to portray themselves and you know like to me it just it made so much sense and i started going down the rabbit hole and you know when i you know i heard about punks really early on and i think like the

floor might have been like 700 or a thousand dollars at that point and i was like no punks are too expensive i want to find the next punks and i start going down the rabbit hole and as i'm hanging out in a lot of these discords you know i just realized that like punks are the next punks and and that's when you know i bought a zombie and i was waiting for the ape and you know cause like i noticed that the people uh in the space especially at that time that were the most knowledgeable generally had crypto punks as their avatars so i was like oh like you know this what does this say like this says that you're successful that says that you understand nfts that says that you've been around a while so like to me i was like it's very much like

in world flex right like for the same reason that like if i meet you i won't tell you how much money i made last year but if i'm wearing a nice watch you kind of that's kind of what i'm trying to know right yeah you need to that tells you everything you need to know without me having to say it and so my thesis was that humans were going to be humans whether they were interacting face to face or behind computer screens and that's really where like the punk's thesis really made sense to me where last cycle i remember everybody was like when lambo went lambo and i was like i think at the end of this cycle it's going to be when punk and that's really why um you know i wrote that thread i i bought i bought those punks and you know

i think i poured a lot of gasoline on that fire yeah the what struck me when you were talking about uh playing fortnite with these kids like wearing these skins and like you you didn't you didn't get i think yeah skins well no excuse me you did get it uh and like everyone's gonna be wearing a skin in the future everyone's wearing it on twitter everyone's wearing on discord you're you i'm talking to you wearing your skin right now on zoom like i'm seeing the skin happen and i'm guessing if maybe it's not this easy right now but in the future you could press a button and put on a different punk or a different a different nft right yeah for sure you know and i think like a lot of people are working but because you already see it on twitter right where people will

change like depending on the project that they you know maybe they just meant it or they want to support it's like you know listen not everybody unless you're steve jobs not everybody wears the same clothes every day right so it's like you know you want to express yourself differently right i i'm drawing a lot of connections to this part of your your uh this part of your career back all the way back to you noticing everyone wearing um apple headphones on the subway right like but it's a little bit different where if everyone's wearing apple headphones on the subway everyone is already buying apple products but what you what you connected is all these kids playing fortnite and then the nft mania uh or not mania but like nft adoption on ethereum and so like one was actually

like reactive like oh i'm seeing apple sell a bunch of products one's a lot like proactive where like oh i'm seeing kids wearing skins and fortnite and then there are these like digital skin things maybe this is just like a story of you just getting better at noticing patterns but any any like insight or comments you want to add to that yeah i think it's probably me just getting better and noticing patterns over time uh i i'd like to think i have more wisdom at this point than i did 20 years ago and i just seeing like like the super cycle right like you know and i started ask like last year like i would start asking all my friends that had kids i'd be like well what did what do they play what do they ask for like because i remember when i was a kid like i'd go to

toys r us and be like oh i want this toy and these kids are asking for like v-bucks and i just noticed more and more that it's very digital as like digital based assets so to me it's like okay that kid you know can't afford this today but at some point in the future he will be okay with affording this right like whenever i have these conversations about describing an nft like the people that have the hardest time understanding it or over the age of 40 the people that get it right away are like when i explain it to a teenager they're like that is awesome how how can i do it and like i've seen my friends my friends kids that are like 14 15 like become like their nft person right like they're they're the ones that are

minting they're the ones that are buying and trading and and doing all this stuff and because they just innately understand it because they've grown up with technology their entire lives so like to me it's like yeah like as these people spend more time in front of a screen like they're they're gonna be spending more money on that too so there's a two other layer zero podcasts that i've done that i see a lot of patterns with this story one is with uh eric connor who uh like like you went to university for finance or business and then we started working at a bank right after right during like 2008 actually started working at a bank uh and then uh he got into the world of of crypto and ethereum being like got a was generally a pretty good trader or a

very good at understanding the psychology of markets and then he got into nfts and that's kind of like where he like prefers to be now and then same thing with dc investor a very similar timeline with you which is the layer zero i did uh last week which is watch the early days of the internet uh also was very knowledgeable investing and now kind of only cares about not only but like really cares about nfts like he's kind of like the nft guy do you have any insights about like why people seem to converge upon like the nft markets the nft game well i i mean i think a lot of it has to do with like the thing that really interests me about the nft market is that i really do think that nfts are the trojan horse for crypto to go mainstream

so when i look at that and like you know like last summer i was involved in deep but like it's difficult you know what i mean like it's you know you have to not everybody wants to play a money game where you know you're going to get a high apy but then like you need to worry about like you know the coin going down and like it's a difficult game to play but like everybody inherently understands what collecting something is like right like what artwork is like so to me like i when i see consumer adoption like it literally is is like it comes from nfts so that makes me way more excited about nfts than crypto in general because i think i think we you can probably agree is that when the way we get mainstream adoption is when people don't even know

that they're using crypto right and i think nfts are are the way that that happens so that's why i'm super excited about nfts i i think that that makes a ton of sense right and the nfgs just have that surface area for adoption right like you're not you're not supposed to like every single nft you're supposed to like the nfts that you like but as a as an investment vehicle there's a difference there where like nfts they're going to be a bajillion nfts right we're going to admit one nft per interest that there is and as a so as a like an asset class i kind of think it makes nfts really really hard to invest in because like on the other side of things like there's just ether there's just one ether right like do you believe in

ethereum oh you bought ether do you believe in nfts which one do you want and so like actually getting broad exposure to nfts i think is is kind of hard and so i mean maybe the answer like that's why there's like this fat crypto punk thesis right it's like well crypto punks might might track like the nft market at large just because they are the og nft but do you have any thoughts on like how to actually gain exposure to nfts when the whole thing is supposed to be like uh fragmented yeah so i mean i i think that's why i think i i always try to red pill people on punks and squiggles and like other like triple a blue chip assets because to me it's like all right if you don't want to do that much work and you want to get involved like you

know buy the creme de la creme right if you want to go down the rabbit hole you can go down the rabbit hole as much as you want but like much like in art right like there's a billion pieces of art that are made every year but not all art accrues value uh you know the same thing with like sports cards or or anything that's that's made there's certain things that accrue value because people covet it and people want it and that's where the value accrual goes so like to me it's like no different than investing in like the art market or some other like high-end asset you just need to do more work right like but i do think that and you're starting to see it already where index funds are being made to track you know certain projects so that it just becomes as easy as owning like an etf

right like where it's like okay i just want exposure to nfts like i just buy this token and that gives me exposure to these nine or ten different projects right either through fractionalization or through outright ownership in the treasury so like it's definitely not easy like i think the fact that people have made a ton of money uh in the last year makes it seem like it's easy but you know i firmly believe like nothing is that easy in life so it's like you need to do your homework and you know do your own research as people always say right do what do you think uh chromies have as much like value capture accrual as punks or crummy squiggles specifically uh or or in that ballpark or like or is it really just like punks

or the lead and that's kind of it yeah no i think punks are like number one uh i think squiggles are up there because you know you look at art blocks as a platform and what it's been able to do in the space it probably has one of the best communities in the space snow fro himself is like an og punk holder that claimed crypto punks on the day they were released and so like to me it's like they they will be historically significant right like as i start talking to more and more people from the contemporary art world i i always find it interesting how a lot of them can resonate with chromie squiggles uh more so than they can with punks and so like you know to me it's like all right if these people will be coming into the space uh especially with like the price

is way less than than what a punk is like they'll probably start allocating more money towards towards squiggles and and so to me i put squiggles up there it's it's snow froze genesis peace it's an ode to punks and i think art blocks is going to be a historically significant platform especially in the generative art space so i'm you know i i like squiggles for that reason yeah for me the squiggles are fun just because they're like the perfect level of nihilism it's like pretty nice like oh a chromey squiggle that's going for like fifty thousand dollars that's kind of weird but also there is some art there as well right like you know it's colorful it's got a shape uh there is some there is some art there but then it also has like a kind

of a the sticking power of punks because chromie squiggles are like the first art blocks project right and so like first art blocks projects it perfectly like balanced nihilism and then also some cool colors that like you know you i could see myself having my chromy squiggle on my wall somewhere like metal cut out print like i i could i would do that and that's kind of like how i think about a lot of like the art blocks art that i that i look at like could i see that on my wall uh and that's that's how personally i value these things and i think that's the right way to do it right like that's what people always say when you buy art buy art that you like not you like when the second you're in it to try to make money then you know like you're

you're gonna lose right like i missed out on board apes because i was like i don't really i don't really like the art you know was that that was a bad financial decision but i didn't want to buy something that i wasn't going to be like all right i'm proud to own this the uh the cool thing that i think about the nft market and i think why people end up grab not everyone but a lot of people end up gravitating towards the nft world is the there's a much larger sense of community and culture in the nfc market than there is in in like traffic right like sweet you made the calls on apple but like did you make any friends along the way like with with nfts like there's a lot of culture along with that tell us about the culture side of things that you've been able to

experience with nfts yeah i mean just the community like you know the number i know everyone says it it's so cliche but like when i first got into the space people would be like oh like you know like you should look at this you should look at that and it wasn't like i feel like sometimes you would get in defy where like somebody's trying to show you something because they want to dump on you like this was more like no like this is like iron snow fro was the guy that red killed me on punks right and he was like dude like you need to buy a zombie like you're spending so much money in the space like this is like the creme de la creme and i was like really and like you know he spent like two days explaining it to me why why i needed a zombie and why why i

needed a punk but specifically like an elite an elite tier punk and like you know it just like that that helpful attitude like i made i've made so many friends that like i've met in the last three four months for the first time that you know it like it's really heartwarming where these people that i've spoken to online every day for like six months prior or a year prior and we meet for the first time like one of my buddies picked me up from the airport i had no idea what he looked like we're sitting there dming on twitter being like yo what what do you look like what are you wearing yeah what are you wearing like what card you have like and like but yeah when we met each other we gave each other like this biggest hug like you know like long-lost

friends that haven't seen each other in 10 years and it was like yo dude like you know we made it right like we're [ __ ] we're doing great and i don't know like it i never i never experienced that obviously in the stock market even you know running a trading desk trading side by side with people every day uh there's something about the community of all doing it together and building all these things from scratch that i think like really resonates with people is there any advice that you have for people who want similar experiences how how did you find your friends how did they find you was it just like being in discord or just like what was what's the process of establishing relationships that you found yeah so i the best is like interacting with people like interact with people as

much as you can go to the discords of the projects you like you're gonna find people that like just like in real life right like you find your people that you gravitate towards and the same thing is going to happen uh online right like a lot of like i was super active in the punk's discord really early on our blocks and then like you know then you start having conversations with people on the side you're like oh like then you start doing deals with these people and like and then those friendships build over time uh the same thing with twitter just interacting with people and you're gonna find like you're you're trying right like i i firmly believe that the more you put yourself out there uh the more you'll find the people that like are like you that you want to be associated with and that to me is like

it's funny because like a lot of projects will will be like oh hey like yo can you help with marketing i'm like you don't you don't even want that right like just go out there and interact with people on twitter and you know be active in discords because the people that will like your artwork will find you right like you don't want to have to sell your stuff because you're trying to sell it right you want people to buy it because it resonates with them and like you know twitter is probably the best free marketing that you could get you know organic right that that people will see your stuff one of the the punk discord finally making a name for yourself in the punk discord is like kind of difficult because that thing is so active and there's so many people there and yeah there are definitely like the

people that are reoccurring or they're on a reoccurring basis what about how like actually trying to like stand out from the crowd and discord as like oh this person has valid interesting contributions to the discourse uh versus you know the just the bots that are there yeah i mean i i think you know anytime you add value whether it's in discord telegram twitter like people will find you um i think that you know one of i think one of the reasons it was uh let's say easier for me to build a brand was because when i did what i did and i wrote my thread about it nobody was really people were calling me an idiot right like for spending six figures on a picture and here we are today where people spending seven eight figures on on jpegs right

and so i think that you know the more value add the the more people will see it and uh and you'll find your tribe that way and you know it's it's very much like the garyvee mentality where it's like you know you you work and you put your stuff out there uh and people will find you because there will be people that want to listen to what you have to say not everybody will necessarily have to want to listen to what you have to say but you'll find the people that want to be part of your community and that want to interact with you and add value to you the way you add value to them so what's uh what's next for g money's nft portfolio do you have any like big plans as to like what to do with the damn thing um you know i'm still i'm

still holding i'm not necessarily minting as i'm not an active mentor you know i'll do stuff every once in a while um i like i think that like i own some of the best assets in nfts so for me to want to sell them and i know 65 219 says this all the time it's like don't sell the institutions your jpegs like i agree you know like there's like if you sell some [ __ ] yeah like if you but like the thing is like if you sell a grail of something right and like like if you were to sell your punk like there's no way it's it'd be very it'd be very unlikely that you could buy your punk back at a lower price like if you were to try to buy it back you'd have to buy it at a significantly higher

premium if you want that exact punk now if you don't care then that's fine you can buy a different punk that's similar but not exactly but it's like these things are all one of a kind so to me i i want to hold on to these things because i do think that you know if if crypto does what we all hear that are here in the movement right now think that it's going to do then you're talking about some of the most you know grail pieces of the next hundred years so like why do i want to sell that for what i think will be pennies on the dollar so uh i was actually that that's a great perspective but i was actually interested in like how your portfolio or how your nft like curation uh will manifest in like the metaverse or the physical world are you going to like

make some sort of digital gallery like because if you're going to hold these things for life like you need to display them somehow uh so what are the displaying plans for for gmoney's nft portfolio um so i'm i'm figuring out how to get a digital display in in my house i don't have as much uh wall space as i like so i'm trying to figure out where to put it but then also like you know there's a couple digital galleries that i want to be setting up i've just been taking my time on it because you know i know that like we're not fully immersed in the metaverse just yet so i don't it's not like i need to rush out and show don't show them off right like even like my like my open sea wallet like anybody can check and people like oh like i love

this collection i love that collection it's like all right like i don't need to i'm not necessarily focused on curating my collection just yet because i'm still in like the accumulation phase because i know that the curation and the showing it off part will come uh soon and i know when that comes i'll i'll be right there at the forefront with it but to me it's like i don't it's not to me there's no huge rush to go out and do it but it's something that like i'm actively thinking about you say that you're still in the uh the curation collection phase what about your nfc portfolio do you think is um missing that that you're really looking for like what are you on the hunt for um i mean i guess maybe some one-on-one i i'd love an x copy probably like my

biggest miss is not buying an x copy when i could have and um now like they're just super priced very high um and then just like kind of like you know i i love like i love bringing artists into the space like justin rosano is a great story where i helped bring him into the space and then just watch that yeah like i was he i mean it's he hit me up because i he either heard me in a clubhouse or he saw me post it on an instagram that i bought the ape for 150k and he originally wanted to sell me his entire collection of twin flames for a hundred thousand and i was like dude like keep the physicals break it up into 100 pieces and sell

them for a thousand bucks each and i thought i was gonna hear from him in like two or three months and he he like calls me back in three days like i sold them all like thank you like you changed my life and then he started going down the rabbit hole and you know obviously he's done incredible things for the space he's done incredible things for his own personal career and like i'm super happy like to me that's one of my great like that's one of my proudest moments in the space of being able to onboard somebody that has had such a huge impact on the space themselves actually i had the uh the fortune to actually get dinner with justin in uh new york the first day i was in there uh and that man just exudes kindness he's just he's just very very concerned for

the world and wants to see the world become a better place and also has dope photography skills yeah yeah no it's like it's incredible and like everything that he's done for the space and you know he always wants to connect with people and you know he's a connector himself and like i i'm just i'm so happy that he's part of the space and able to do what he's been doing because to me he's probably the best the best community builder in crypto with what he's been able to do in in such a short amount of time totally absolutely um one perspective uh i'd like to get out of you is like there's a especially in crypto crypto has this very powerful force of like making people never feel like that they have enough and you also

have to play the game like we're in the world of scarcity technology and scarcity technology puts in scarcity mindsets about people and you say like you're still into you know collecting your nft portfolio your portfolio is not done do you ever do you ever have like a vision of the future where you're like you know i'm done i did it this is i'm i'm where i've wanted to be always be and now i'm here like is that a destination or does that even or does not that place not even exist so i kind of feel like i'm already there right like i think that it's it's funny you mentioned the scarcity mindset because i think from from really early on humans in general are taught the scarcity mindset like that's survival right and i don't know when it happened exactly for me but it it there's something that

switched from being a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset that really was like okay like you know how can i pay it forward not every interaction should be so transactional where like if you get something i get something right like there could there's there exists a world where i can help you and i don't expect anything in return you know and i guess coming from finance which is very much a zero-sum game i lived i lived and breathed that scarcity mindset for 20 years professionally and so you know like i always had like a number that i wanted to hit that you know i'm like oh if i hit this like i'm gonna take my foot off the gas and i hit that number and i like i crushed that number and like now i'm sitting here it's like okay so now that like you know

for all intents and purposes money isn't as big of an issue for me anymore like what do i want and it's like i want to increase adoption of nfts because if i can help increase adoption of nfts then that increases adoption of crypto which gets us to the future that i think uh we deserve of self-sovereignty right and so to me it's more so about like what can i do to push the space forward it's not so much about that scarcity mindset of like oh how can i hoard more how can i make more money the money is great because it helps you get to the vision and it gives me the means to help achieve that vision but like it's no longer necessarily just about the money for me which um you know if you told me that 10 years ago i would

have called you crazy but like i it's amazing being able to see that transformation in myself but then see it uh throughout the space with a lot of people that are like oh yeah like i don't need to work but i'm working my ass off because like i want a better future for humanity right and like to me like crypto is probably one of the best like the best way to leverage your time to have like an impact on humanity like 10 20 30 years from now i think one of the best reasons why i truly resonate with crypto is that uh kevin iwaki gives this line like crypto wasn't meant to make you rich it was meant to make you free and well wealth is a part of freedom right like you need wealth to have

freedom but wealth doesn't necessarily give you freedom you need all the other thing properties that give you freedom as well and i think one of the best things about crypto is that like it allows a lot of people to go from the scarcity mindset into this abundance mindset but then the next step after that once you are in the abundance mindset if you still want to pump your bags the way that that works is you also carry along people who are still in that scarcity mindset and then also get them into the abundance mindset and that's just the simple nature of a positive some game we were like hey i have enough but if i want this to go up i need other people to have enough as well right they also need to come to come to come with us and that culture is something that i

don't think that you find in in trad five right and that's one of the one of the big tailwinds of crypto is uh one of the most underappreciated uh properties of crypto is we can export our culture to the world that needs it the most yeah no i totally agree that that was really well said um i agree with everything right like it's it and it's it's funny because like i'm sure you i i don't know can you pinpoint that that where that shift happened for you um yeah it it happened around like the 2000 to 3000 ether price where i stopped caring about the grind it's like oh like i need to make sure i'm on the next wave like i need to

capture all and at some point it's like i i i was i wore shea guevara shirts to middle school uh and so like i i have like this very like like i was like oh yeah capitalism is evil blah blah blah very much like learned the error of my ways and like now appreciate capitalism for what it is and now i'm just like i this is this is the grind of the psychological stress of like the the scarcity mindset i was just turned off from and so like i remember going through 2017 like trading 50 times a day like learning about a token buying that token learning about a new token selling the old token buying a new token like hopping from token token and then in this new bull bull market i very much learned that like not only does not doing that

like ease off a bunch of stress but i also make more money by not trading away into into impulse right and so like having a much slower mindset and like um just like having a much longer term thinking um has helped me have just a broader perspective and i think that's that longer-term mindset turned into like hey this is not about like me catching every single wave this is me exporting the values and the culture as much as possible because again the best way i'm going to be able to pump my own bags is to get as many people into crypto as possible right yeah no and and that's like a great a great thought right because like i sit there and like i dude i i don't check the price of crypto like that much

anymore you know i mean it's like the the the times that like like i think yesterday like we made it or two days ago we made an all-time high in bitcoin i was like oh i'm like cool like i know but i have no idea right because i'm just so busy i'm like all right what's my mission how do i export that culture to other people because that increases adoption right and that's kind of what my main goal is and you know if like you said like if by doing that the value of my portfolio goes up great but like i do know that ultimately long term the value of the portfolio will go up so that will take care of itself as long as i'm doing my job right yeah i'm a big fan of not having any stress these days and like you know not

trying like being zen about the marcus is definitely key for that gee when we go and fast forward 10 20 30 years in the future what do you want the legacy of g money to look like um just somebody that pushed the nft space forward that helped people understand that like everything in the real world is an nft uh and as we go more digital uh the way to that self-sovereignty is through decentralized uh systems uh so that you know we're not slaves to to any overlord or anything down the road right like i i'm i'm trying to go as fast as far away from that dystopian uh future that that will always be pictured in sci-fi um so that we can be free to do what we want

well said sir gee we've uh shook in hands a number of times in real life but we're about to do it again in uh mediverso in december you want to pitch to the listeners why they might not be interested in coming to uh puerto rico to go to mediverso yeah for sure it's uh it's a one-day nft conference on december 7th in puerto rico it's the beginning of puerto rico blockchain week uh and so myself and a couple people based out of pr were like why don't we just get together and like you know get some of the best minds in nfts and you know talk talk shop for a day and uh and that's kind of where the genesis of it came from myself and amanda cassette uh decided to team up and and throw this great event and i'm super excited we have a lot of

great speakers you're hosting one of the panels so um thank you for that and and looking forward to it do you still still playing fortnite these days uh not as much as i used to but i i literally wanna then just because i've been traveling but i definitely i definitely need to get back on if if you want to play some time let me know i don't have an xbox sadly oh wait no it's on pc though i can play on pc yeah do they well maybe one day when they upload punk punk skins to fortnite i'll get myself in there hi man i'm patiently waiting for that day yeah how else do you like tune out and relax from these markets um you know i i'd say probably just going out and uh like going like i love food i'm a foodie and just hanging out

with friends and i generally try to be present when i'm with people so that forces me to obviously put the phone down and and not be on twitter or any socials and to me that's like a great way to tune out right because like i think a lot of times we get lost in in the grind and to your point where like you know you go down the rabbit hole and there's always there's not enough time for all the work that needs to be done so there's times like i sit there and i'm in front of my computer it's like two o'clock in the morning it's like dude you need to one disconnect and to go to sleep but then also like you know sometimes you just need to go out and have some times uh with friends right and and appreciate the human element

you've uh you've been doing a decent amount of traveling into all the uh the crypto conferences why do you like doing that so much um because i i like the human element and i think that you know at the end of the day like for the same reason that you have this show right where it's like crypto as much as it is about the tech it's about the humans that are behind it right like if if you had like bad people with bad intentions building this tech out it would show in the tech right and so uh to me it's very much about like how do i do my part right i'm not a builder i'm an investor and an advocate so uh i need to do my part of like advocating for the space and making sure people hear the message from the right

person because there's going to be a lot of people like in any mania that come in and try to get in front of it and try to say that they're the expert when maybe they have their their interests that might not be totally aligned for an open future right so that to me is like i think that that's super important is educating people uh educating the mass the masses at large uh and if that means i i need to travel like i enjoy traveling but like you know sometimes you just want to be at home and and relax and be more productive so but i understand it's part of the job it's it's what i signed up for would you ever sell your punk i don't know how much you want to buy for me you know i see it as something that

hopefully like i passed down to my grandchildren and you know it's a family heirloom almost like a crest um but how do you know how do you know they're not just gonna sell it i i mean i i don't know you know hopefully i won't be around when that happens gee thank you so much for coming on to layer zero and giving us your time this was a fantastic story yeah thank you for having me i really enjoyed my time cheers hey we hope you enjoyed the video if you did head over to bankless hq right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence we recommend joining our daily newsletter podcast and community as a bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your

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